


Dreadful, Terrible It

by Dorkangel



Category: Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 - Malloy
Genre: (Concerning only Natasha and Anatole), Alternate Universe - America, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Turned Into Vampire, Consent Issues, Duelling, Eventual Fluff, Follows Canon More Or Less, Magical Realism, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Other Character Tags to be Added - Freeform, Pierre's Internal Sass, Urban Fantasy, Vampire!Kuragins, Werewolf!Rostovs, regular updates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-27
Updated: 2016-08-14
Packaged: 2018-07-16 20:38:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 18,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7283896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dorkangel/pseuds/Dorkangel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Sometimes, Pierre wishes that he hadn’t married a vampire.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>But Pierre wishes an awful lot of things, especially when he’s drunk. It’s probably just best to ignore him.</em>
</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>There's a war going on out there somewhere, a hidden war between a very powerful vampire clan and a very powerful werewolf pack, and Andrey is away to fight in it, his alliance secured by his engagement to a young potential werewolf. Or, it was - until Natasha was Turned by a certain handsome, unscrupulous vampire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: The Kuragin Clan

**Author's Note:**

> Um. Some of this is vaguely crack-ish? But mostly not.  
> The only possible warnings are that Pierre is slightly depressed, Helene is cheating on him, a duel happens (well - a fight in a parking lot), Anatole is a cockwaffle with no respect for consensual relationships who manipulates Natasha, and centuries-old werewolves have complexes and such surrounding virginity. But that's all fairly canon-typical.

Pierre does not like his brother in law. He would like this to be qualified before the story even begins, to avoid confusion. To be entirely honest he doesn’t particularly like his wife, but that’s a whole other issue, and their relationship has been a marriage of convenience for years anyway – on the grounds that it’s more convenient than a divorce for both his safety and her comfort – so it doesn’t really matter.

The thing is that you don’t have to qualify his wife sucking on his neck to people because, at least to some extent, they expect it. Hell, the surprising thing about Helene sucking on his neck in public would not be the public neck sucking; it would be that it was _him_ , her _husband_ , as opposed to various other assorted ladies and gentlemen. Pierre pretends he doesn’t know about her affairs, but the truth is that he doesn’t care. She’s not hurting anyone.

She’s not hurting anyone other than him, anyway, and that’s perfectly okay – as a couple, they got past the emotional point of no return a long time ago and currently exist in what Pierre likes to visualise as a sort of sentimentally barren no-man’s-land, so it’s not like she’s hurting his _feelings_ or anything – because the pin-pricks of her needled teeth barely sting and he can deal with the slight dizziness of the blood loss now and then, if it means the poor souls stupid enough to get close to Helene and her brother don’t need to end up drained and bloodless in a back alley somewhere.

Which brings us back to the original point of contention: just because Pierre allows his wife’s brother to occasionally latch onto his carotid like a vampiric limpet, doesn’t mean he can actually stand the man.

Perhaps ‘man’ is the wrong word. Not in terms of gender, as Anatole’s almost admirably rigid dedication to his obnoxiously hypermasculine hipster aesthetic will tell you and everyone else in a three mile radius; more in terms of _species_ , although Pierre’s suspicion that _Homo Nosferatu_ may be a kind of wild evolutionary throwaway from a common ancestor would probably mean that he can’t be as salty about Anatole’s exact genetics as he would like to be. But, as long experience has taught him, none of the four parasitic idiots currently living in his house actually care about the science of their existence. He will continue to be just as pissy as he likes – which is _very_.

Sometimes, Pierre wishes that he hadn’t married a vampire.

But Pierre wishes an awful lot of things, especially when he’s drunk. It’s probably just best to ignore him.

From the point of a scientist, the whole experience is indescribably fascinating. That’s half the reason he allows four vampires to feed from him on a regular basis – another large part of it being his own healthy sense of self-preservation, which is not a phrase usually used in the context of consensual heavy blood loss, and the aforementioned desire to prevent murders like some kind of bespectacled, pathetic batman – out of a sheer desire to learn more about a supernatural phenomenon. He tells himself that knowledge in all forms is invaluable; but this knowledge, more than most. How many lives are taken by these creatures every year? There’s no justice, none at all, in a perfect predator being kept a secret, being romanticised at best. God knows Anatole takes ruthless advantage of the brooding stereotype pushed by young adult novels already. Approaching this with rigid, scientific resolve – even though it could kill him – makes him feel kind of Curie-esque, like his life has purpose.

Of course, it’s still a rather narrow area of study. As far as Pierre is aware, he’s the only expert, the only serious scholar. He doesn’t delude himself as to what his wife and her clan would do to him if he was to tell anyone, but the darkly amusing thought of just how much his biologist friends would flip their collective shit at his research still lingers... really, there’s no way that vampirism doesn’t involve some kind of new and exciting humanoid. Vampires can have fertile offspring with other vampires; that makes them, in the simplest scientific term of the word, a species. But they can also transform others, humans, and if eight years of ‘donations’ have taught him anything it’s that simply having a vampire drink from you is enough to Turn you. (That’s how they say it, with a capital T in ‘Turn’, to mean transform. Pierre’s considering compiling a dictionary: _‘to Turn’, verb, to utterly drain a human being of blood while having them consume the blood of a vampire; ‘Donor’, noun, hapless blood sack._ ) It would seem that the method of Turning is a sort of all organic, mythological gene therapy via blood transplant. Like, an _entire_ transplant of _all_ your blood.

He has evidence. What kind of a scientist would he be if he didn’t have evidence? Well, a disgraced one, and that is doubtless what he would be if not for Father’s insistence on blatantly bribing the university, but... regardless. Both Anatole and Helene were born vampires, he has been told, more than three hundred and fifty years ago. Which is terrifying. Which he also, incidentally, would not have guessed by looking at them: they have the whole ‘eternal youth’ thing going strong, but even beyond that, their grasp of modern life is eerily up to date. With the notable exception of Balaga – Pierre’s pretty sure he’s found a website claiming that Balaga is a cryptid, and he’s not entirely certain that that theory doesn’t have any credible basis – Dolokhov, Anatole, and Helene have flawlessly adapted to the twenty-first century with what appears to be a single-minded determination to _completely erase_ any evidence that they lived in any other century. Which is also terrifying. But Dolokhov and Balaga, the other two members of the vampire clan currently living in Pierre’s house and stealing his wine, were Turned as adults.

Pierre has had the ‘ _so... vampires exist_ ’ conversation approximately once, while very drunk, having wandered into the wrong club one day and happened upon his wife, her boyfriend, her brother, and someone’s corpse. It was not a good day. Understandably, neither he nor any other party involved are prepared to have that conversation again. From the little information they had surrendered at the time and that he actually remembers, however, he understands the transformation process to be crazily painful and fairly dangerous. As with the difficulties surrounding early (human to human) blood transfusions, there was a high risk of antibodies rejecting the foreign genetic material – _do_ _vampires have blood types?_ he wonders – and blood had to be drained at exactly the same rate that it was being replaced.

Pierre knows from experience that it’s sort of difficult to restrain a hungry vampire once they’ve tasted blood. So. Keeping pace with a man in a lot of pain trying to drink is going to be something of a problem during a transformation. Especially considering that – although he’s only going off the way that Dolokhov speaks with the Kuragins about nineteenth century Russia like a man with first-hand experience of it – both of the members of their clan not born vampires were Turned in a time before proper intravenous technology would have eased the exchange.

All the information that he has on them, every last bit, is stored on a brand new laptop locked away with some goddamn _stone age_ level privacy hardware. If Helene’s somewhat-disturbing fashion blog hadn’t warned him off the clan’s perfectly sound ability to operate computers, he might have left all his research practically out in the open.

Not. A. Good. Idea.

It’s this laptop that he locks, closes, and stashes under his bed with the few anti-vampire weapons he has taken the time to acquire, like that’s not the most obvious hiding place in the world, and that he turns from to walk downstairs. Pierre still occupies the master bedroom of the house – Helene does not. Not for the first time, he silently thanks whatever God probably isn’t there for the semi-obscene amount of money and pain that went into building his father’s house, a grand monument to excess. Pierre’s father didn’t care about him very much, and neither does his wife: this ridiculous house has allowed him to live under the same roof as each of them throughout the respective years without necessarily having to ever encounter them. The same goes for the rest of the Kuragin clan now.

Which, unfortunately, has yet to prevent them from all gathering communally in the kitchen when they want to scream at each other. Pierre considers dropping yet another unsubtle hint in the direction of getting another kitchen put in somewhere further away from him, and then how embarrassing exactly it would be if he was to make a dash for the six pack in the fridge with his hands over his ears.

“You’re being obstinate!” comes Helene’s voice through the walls, unusually shrill and met with a low snarl that could only be Anatole. Balaga and Dolokhov wouldn’t snarl at either of their creators. One of the easiest things to grasp about their strange society is that there’s some kind of inequity in the social dynamics of those born vampires and those Turned by others. He can count the times he’s seen Dolokhov win an argument with either of the twins on one hand, in years and years of constant bickering, and the amount of times that Anatole has shut down Dolokhov just by snapping at him must be immeasurable.

Taking a deep, steadying breath, he decides to try and walk through the middle of the argument in the hope that if he’s slow and quiet he may be ignored. From the doorway he can see every other member of the family he never asked for, and quite possibly the only family more dysfunctional than that of his friend Andrei: there’s Anatole pacing the floor, hands tangled in his stupid, slicked-back undercut, a defensive scowl fixed on his handsome face; perched across from him on the countertop, her eyes glittering pools of blood and her fangs bared, is Helene; Dolokhov is reclining at the table and observing them with a casual, sleazy amusement that just barely manages to disguise his own tense shoulders and cold gaze; and oblivious as usual in the corner, Balaga plays solitaire with himself and cackles periodically. Strange man.

They glance at him as one and become silent whiplash fast as he takes a step inside.

Pierre exhales and mutters, “Ignore me, pretend I’m not here. I really don’t want to know.”

“I don’t understand why you’re being so uptight about this!” Anatole cuts in, the words thunderous. Pierre ducks instinctively as he dodges past the taller man. “You’ve never even bothered about it before-”

“In fairness, that’s because you’ve never been this stupid over some girl before,” hums Dolokhov, and shrugs when Anatole glares at him for it.

“You don’t understand. I’ve explained it to you, listen. None of you are listening. She’s a _goddess._ ”

“Oh, she’s first rate,” drawls Helene. Both siblings talk of their conquests – or is it thralls? – of all genders with the tone of connoisseurs, and Pierre can’t help but imagine the gross conversation they must have had about him: _stout, short, sad, messy sandy hair and glasses and a penchant for the ridiculous, nothing special, darling, just rich_. “But she’s most certainly not for you – not until she’s married, at least.”

“Oho, there’s a point.” Pierre hears Dolokhov agree delightedly as he surveys the inside of their fridge and wonders why creatures able to survive on only blood insist on drinking all his alcohol. “When she’s married you won’t be able to turn her.”

“Why _not?_ ”

Wonderful. This is going to way of a full blown fight that will probably end with his furniture being smashed, and, sure, he can afford to buy more, but it looks awfully suspicious to have to replace the table every couple of months. Helene’s voice is a growl when she answers her brother’s indignant demand.

“Because she won’t be human, dumbass.”

“And because Bolkonsky would kick your ass.” mutters Balaga cryptically.

Greatly reluctantly, Pierre extracts himself from the fridge. He’s okay not knowing what the clan is up to most of the time. Perfectly okay. In actual fact, the phrase _ignorance is bliss_ has never been as dear to him. Not knowing helps him sleep at night.

“I’m sorry, what?”

But ‘Bolkonsky’ can only be a reference to one of three people, who all happen to be his best friend and close relations thereof.

“Oh, wonderful, involve the human.” Anatole sneers, and storms away with Dolokhov, as usual, close at heel.

Helene regards him dismissively.

“There’s a war going on, Pierre. Rather a lot of people you know are involved; very soon you will be too. And you don’t know a thing of it.”


	2. Natasha and the Rostovs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, the never-ending exposition! Chapters will be posted every five days. Hopefully.

“Natalya, darling!”

Before she can even brace herself, she’s held in her godmother’s embrace, wrapped safely in layers and layers of warmth and wolf-smell and an instinctive feeling of _pack_ that she’s aware she can’t really sense yet but likes to think she can anyway. Sonya is laughing warmly.

Marya Dmitryevna is not a tall woman, barely coming to as high as Natasha’s shoulders; what she lacks in height, though, she makes up for through sheer force of personality. Where she goes, there is vivacity and noise. There’s a red leather jacket on her shoulders (over her black dress) that perfectly matches the shade of scarlet nail varnish she’s wearing, most certainly not by accident, and lipstick of the same kind cracked slightly by the gleeful smile that she wears.

“Look at you!” Her hands are still gripping her goddaughter’s shoulders tight as she takes a step back to survey her, with the assured strength of those not accustomed to dealing with mere mortals, the myriad bangles and rings digging in slightly. Let it never be said that Marya is not a fan of the 1960s, despite having been born more than a century prior. “You’ve grown, and gotten even more beautiful!”

Another, more gentle hand comes to rest on Natasha’s shoulder, undemanding but soothing to the excitement of the situation. Marya glances up to the other girl who standing and waiting with her usual honeyed smile gracing her softly pretty features.

“Oh, and Sonya! How wonderful to have the two of you here, after all this time.”

The family resemblance between the three women would not be, to a stranger, immediately apparent. Natasha, her black hair painstakingly straightened and thrown to one side, is all expressive dark eyes and flowing skirts, a princess clad in pink and denim; Sonya, with her almost severe auburn bob and straight bangs, the thoughtful crease to the edge of her smile, and a gun holster neatly concealed beneath her adorable vintage dress, seems to have come from a wholly separate world; and Marya is... well, she’s Marya, with the composite fashion sense of 160 years of life and red hair that would perhaps suggest a closer relation to Sonya than Natasha, belied by hazel eyes that shine almost yellow in the light.

But despite their dissimilarities, they are cousins, of a sort. Their family trees meet, fork, separate, meet again, binding them together by blood and marriage and a sort of hidden heritage that all three are far too aware of.

“Now, Andrei is still away,” Marya says, and watches Natasha’s face carefully for any sign of oncoming tears. There’s none, only resignation, and she sends a knowingly grateful glance to Sonya for warning the child. She’s always been a good girl, Sonya, and she’ll be a good handler for Natasha’s wolf. “But he’ll be back fairly soon; a matter of a few weeks, if anything.”

“Won’t it be convenient to have been bitten before the wedding anyway?” agrees Natasha with a sort of good-natured shrug, as though at seventeen she’s no longer the emotional child that she has always been. Marya knows from experience not to fall into _that_ trap. “I do miss him. Like, a lot.”

As one, Sonya and Marya turn to lead Natasha into the house: it’s not her fault that she’s a hopeless romantic, of course, but there’s no point leading her on with it.

“It’s not as though young Bolkonsky is your boyfriend, now.” she’s reminded by her godmother in a stern tone. “Let’s not forget his family’s history with us.”

“He’s a human, Marya, he doesn’t even care what his father thinks. They don’t _remember_ that much.”

The three of them cross the threshold as Natasha says the dismissive words. Sonya stiffens infinitesimally and an enormous black wolf lying in wait by the stove whines, sensing her discomfort.

Marya winces – imperceptible, to anyone but the wolf and to Sonya, who has been training for a very long time to notice such things.

“A little sensitivity, Natasha, please. A biologist would still call you a human right now, after all.”

One glance at her cousin’s reproachful expression, and she turns scarlet.

“Oh! Sorry, sorry.”

“Come along, darling.” Marya sniffs, always efficient and rarely subtle with her changes of subject. “There’s a busy schedule for you – we’ve got to get your dress fitted, and Sonya’s, and tomorrow there’s another party to keep up a peaceable front with the bloodsuckers.” For a moment her expression becomes bright. “And Pierre will be there! You know him, his father and your father were friends. Petyr Kirilovich Bezukhov.”

“ _Pierre?_ ” Natasha seems at once confused and elatedly happy. “That lovely man! I... didn’t realise that he was a vampire-”

“He’s not,” Sonya laughs, drawing her into her arms as Marya hurries off to scold the sleepy wolf into trotting back to its duties. “He’s married to one of the Kuragins. Helene.”

Marya snorts audibly from the kitchen.

“Now _there_ ’s a creature one should stay far away from.”

As they so often do, more and more frequently with the approach of her transformation, Natasha’s eyes become slightly distant, her gaze straying to some hazy, dreamlike place in her mind.

“Pierre’s an old soul, but for Helene to have lived for so much longer to than him... And to know that she’ll outlive him one day... What do you think she was feeling, their wedding day, knowing that one day she won’t remember him and his love?”

Sonya looks kindly at her, clearly entirely prepared to wait out the fit of sentimentality: Marya is beyond such things.

“Contempt, probably.” she huffs as she strides back to the two younger women. “Andrei is mortal too, let’s not forget. Such matches are _not_ for love. Yours is not, and neither was Helene’s: she just didn’t bother to tell Pierre that. He was intended to die ‘mysteriously’ soon afterwards the ceremony, I don’t doubt, and she would put on a sad front, change her name, and disappear with his money.”

Natasha drops her gaze to the floor and nods fast. As unruffled as always, Marya leads them upstairs through the grand old house that has been in their family for as long as their have been werewolves in the United States, and Sonya links hands with Natasha to whisper in her ear.

“The Kuragins got more than they bargained for with Pierre.” she says quietly, an unusual colour of thrilled interest to her voice. “Since none of them bothered to look into the fact that he’s been best friends with the world’s most prominent family of hunters since childhood, he figured out that they’re vampires pretty quickly, and managed to get the word out to Andrei. They don’t dare to touch him, not knowing that the Bolkonskys are just waiting for an excuse to kick their asses.”

Marya manages somehow to spin on a high heel while continuing to walk upstairs, and the two of them spring apart, remembering suddenly that – being the leader of the entire Rostov pack, the youngest person and only the second woman to have ever held that position, and therefore a distinguished and very powerful werewolf – she has preternatural hearing. She’s kind enough to mention it.

“Now, I presume by your shock that Pierre wasn’t at last night’s little get-together?”

Last night’s ‘little get-together’ was a magnificently orchestrated meeting of a number of vampire clan, werewolf pack, and hunter family representatives to announce the joining of the Rostovs and Bolkonskys and the peace that the alliance would bring, which of course was completely subverted by the fact that everyone in the room understood exactly the disadvantage that the vampires would be put at, people with very long lives don’t tend to forget old hatreds of each other, and the fact that the whole affair then vaguely resembled a world olympics of passive aggressive posturing and dramatics.

Natasha and Sonya had been exhausted – travelling by train for two days straight to get from one end of the country to the other, only five or so minutes to get changed in a hotel room before the gathering, and hyped up the whole time thinking about Andrei – and the ballroom had been dark, half-lit by candlelight, and Sonya had wandered away into a corner and fallen asleep on the couch, and Natasha had been tired enough that she found it funny and took a picture, and then, and...

And then she had gone looking for some other Rostov wolf to get permission to leave, because it was late, and had stumbled into the arms of a tall man with dark hair and eyes as pale blue as a winter sky, and cold, cold hands that had gripped her arms to steady her. It was as though she was suddenly alone in the room with him: he had felt closer to her than any man had ever dared to be, and his strange eyes had seemed to see straight into her soul. _Miss Rostova,_ he said with a velvet purr in his voice. _Strange to see you in such a hurry to get away from your own party._

It was then that she noticed the tapered points of his teeth, put two and two together, and realised who – _what_ – he was. And yet there had seemed to be nothing formidable about him – they talked for a longer time than she had thought, after that, until Sonya managed to wake up for long enough to escort Natasha back to their hotel. He had been so handsome, so agreeable, so good-natured, even if some of his words carried a dark edge that she presumes was perhaps because he knew of her engagement to his enemy. Vaguely, dreamily, she wonders if vampire blood magic can work on mortals.

“No.” Sonya is saying, replying to Marya’s earlier question and surreptitiously shaking Natasha’s hand to snap her out of it. “But his brother in law was, the Kuragin heir.”

“Anatole Kuragin? Horrible man. No manners at all, and forever disregarding the laws that his father sets out.”

Natasha feels a rush of guilt in her heart. Marya knows better than she does about these things, obviously, by sheer experience more than anything. She should trust her godmother. She should trust the leader of the pack.

Only, Anatole had been so very charming and sweet, and hadn’t he said _I look forward to our next meeting?_ What could that mean but that he wants to see her again?

No, no, it was nothing. He only meant the wedding, of course.

“Let’s hope for his sake that he didn’t do anything to my little Natalya.” Marya hums, and when she turns to arch a meaningful eyebrow at the still-silent Natasha her eyes are wolf-yellow.

“He spoke to me.” admits Natasha. “Briefly.”

“Attracted to blood purity!” declares Marya, with scarcely a moment’s hesitation. “Vampires have ridiculous noses, and I’ve always said, they can smell blood purity. Which reminds me, Natasha, dear,”

Both Natasha and Sonya do their best to maintain straight faces at Marya’s mock-serious expression as she proceeds into the interrogation she’s been throwing at Natasha for years.

“Now, child. You’re staying away from drugs, smoking, alcohol?”

“Yes, Marya.”

“Boyfriends? And girlfriends?”

“Yes, Marya.”

“Tattoos?”

“Yes, Marya.”

“I thought I heard that you had a tattoo?” Sonya puts in, inclining her head to the side like an inquisitive sparrow. “A dragon, right? On your back-”

“Alright, enough of that!” Marya bats at her jokingly. “Insolent child – the level of disrespect, really!”

They arrive outside the familiar rooms set out for them, and Marya, smiling at the giggling Natasha, shrugs off her jacket to reveal a glimpse of inked dragon scales through the straps of her dress.

“It’s not like it really matters. Tradition dictates the whole nonsense, but science will tell you, it’s not blood purity, it’s all to do with your genes – the only thing that will stop you from Turning would be a vampire bite,” She shudders melodramatically. “And let’s not even think of that!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love Marya. I love how her first appearance in the book just mainly consists of yelling "Cossack!" at young Natasha, and how apparently people called her "The Terrible Dragon" because she's so badass. And obviously Grace McLean could just murder me and I would thank her.


	3. Vampires at the Party

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for Pierre's alcoholism.

Pierre likes to think that he is not a gloomy man. Pessimistic, yes, but not gloomy. He expects the worst and is often pleasantly surprised.

Which is why he doesn’t expect very much of the night in the first place, not when Dolokhov slams a fist down on his desk to wake him up, laughs at Pierre’s irate cursing, and tosses a black tie in his general direction with the somewhat cryptic instruction to _come be nice to some wolfies with us._ It’s isn’t though he had been intending to collapse over his work last night – although, come to think of it, that seems to be happening more and more frequently; he runs his tongue around his mouth to check for the taste of sleeping pills, making a mental note to run some tests for them later.

Dolokhov is still leaning on his doorframe when he peels himself upright.

“Bro,” he says, because of course he, a vampire, would say ‘bro’, and Pierre forces himself to suppress the wave of rage that Dolokhov’s speciality seems to be inducing. “Your sleep schedules are, like, fucked.”

Amazingly, Dolokhov isn’t actually a moron. The evidence for this theory isn’t overwhelming – to Pierre’s dubious memory, he’s worn sleeves approximately once in the last century; he follows _Anatole_ of all people about like an idiotic puppy; he speaks in a combination of snarky remarks and slang he’s learned from the internet; he spends hours on his hair – but it’s there, and he suspects that the whole Florida Fuckboy thing is more of an act than Dolokhov likes to admit. There may even be a soul in there, somewhere, despite Dolokhov’s clear reluctance to keep it clean.

Which doesn’t mean that he doesn’t irritate Pierre far more easily than the other three.

“Could you piss off?” Pierre snaps, jabbing a finger in his direction aggressively

Dolokhov flashes a smile, cloyingly sweet.

“Sure, I could. Just a bit fucked out, y’know? From your wife. From fucking your wife, Pierre. Your wife whom you are married to, whom I frequently have sexual intercourse with.”

He disappears off to bother someone else as Pierre feels his hands ball helplessly into fists. It shouldn’t get to him: it shouldn’t, but it does.

“One day,” he promises himself. The words feel empty even as they pass his lips. “One day, I’m gonna fight him.”

 

*

 

“There you are!”

Pierre wonders as she clasps his hands painfully tight within her own whether Marya Dmitryevna has ever done anything quietly in her life, and then remembers her threatening some driver who cut her off on her motorbike once, and thinks _only when she’s so mad she burns cold._

Marya beams at him and straightens his tie, apparently unconsciously.

“Wonderful to see you again, and after so long.”

“And you too,” he says, perfectly sincere, as he looks behind her through the noise of the party to the young woman trailing her around. Not Natasha: he would have recognised the child, and probably apologised to her for the circumstances forcing her into an arranged marriage in the goddamn twenty first century, which no one else here seems to see a problem with. “I’m sorry, I’ve been, uh, busy...”

“Oh, don’t mention it.” Marya waves for the girl to come forwards, who does and shakes his hand with surprising firmness for the mildness in her face. “This is Sofia, my niece – I’ll try to work out where Natalya’s managed to get to.”

The girl seems nice enough: white blazer, ruler-straight bangs, freckles. Unfortunately, as Helene makes a habit of telling pretty much everyone, Pierre is even more hapless with women than he is with anyone of any other gender.

“Um, so... Sofia-”

“Please call me Sonya.” she blurts. “God, only Marya calls me that. I’d forgotten that she does it.”

“Right, Sonya. Sorry.” He glances around the room for any light topic of conversation other than ‘what’s your favourite colour’, finds none, and decides to throw himself in at the deep end and see if he floats. “So, you’re a werewolf?”

Fortunately, she laughs. He figures he can work with that.

“No. I’m a Rostov, and I have the genetic potential to be a werewolf, but I’m still technically human.”

At that, his ears prick up, interested, and he puts his drink down. “I’m sorry, I’m afraid I’m not very well informed on... ah, werewolf biology? You mean to say you’re Unturned, or-”

“I couldn’t make the transformation,” she tells him, her voice calm. Pierre, wisely, shuts up and listens. “Lycanthropy is a genetic disorder affecting – well, we’re not sure, but a very small percentage of the world’s population. That’s why vampires can’t become werewolves: it’s a human disease. There’s a gene that controls whether or not your white blood cells fight off the toxin passed on by the bite – if you have the dominant allele, you won’t respond-”

“Other than screaming, presumably.” he adds in, unable to help himself. Sonya glances at him curiously, interrupted in her paced, rehearsed science speech. Pierre smiles awkwardly. “No reaction to being bitten, other than screaming because a rather large wolf just took a chunk out of you?”

She looks amused, nods, continues.

“But if you have a pair of recessive alleles, like me or most of the other Rostovs, you’ll become infected.”

“And transform?”

“Most of the time, yes.”

Sonya’s hand tightens around the elegant stem of the glass she’s holding, and she looks distinctly uncomfortable; Pierre would be fully happy to drop the conversation there, maybe continue it with Marya if the desire to learn more about the differences between various supernatural creatures was consuming him, but she sighs determinedly and finishes.

“But, sometimes, you have a genetic disposition to- well, to die, before you can finish the transformation. It’s fairly rare, but the toxin can just overwhelm your system, and your heart could give out... or your bones might snap the wrong way or anything like that.”

“Which is you.” he concludes, trying to keep his voice soft. Sonya inclines her head in agreement, just a tiny bit bitterly.

“Which is me. It’s not like we’re still in the middle ages or something – we don’t just go around biting people, we’ve got genetic testing and things to check chances of survival. And I’m not a wolf, but I’m still a part of the pack. I’m going to be Natasha’s handler.”

“Natasha’s what?”

She looks like she’s enjoying shocking some random stranger slightly, and he feels vindicated on her behalf, resigned to enjoy the explanation.

“Werewolves can transform whenever they want, except-”

“On the full moon?”

“No,” she laughs politely. “It’s tradition to Turn new wolves on the full moon, but it isn’t mandatory. We transform involuntarily just under a month from our first transformation, and packs sync together, through hormones.”

“Wolf-period.” Pierre mumbles wisely to himself. Sonya’s tone becomes slightly more grim.

“But when they do transform involuntarily, they’re more feral. Less in control of themselves. Especially because – well, in the old days, everyone would be Turned at eighteen, but now it doesn’t matter so much because we know all the science of it, but... Natasha’s going to be Turned on her birthday, and she’ll be young and she won’t have nearly as much power over her impulses as an older wolf would. That’s why there are handlers.”

“You must be very capable.” he tells her, sincere. “If everyone transforms together, that has to involve coordinating a large group of wild animals, right?”

She seems pleased.

“They’re a cohesive army, with proper handling.” Sonya glances around to make sure that Marya isn’t within earshot, grinning a little self-consciously. “We have a bit of a reputation, those who can’t Turn, to be sort of scary. It’s- we’ve got to have the same level of killing ability as the rest of the pack, and we have to know how to monitor them as people and as animals.”

“I can see how that might make you a little scary.” Pierre agrees easily. “Vampires are a little less... managed. Although, I find that the two species are more similar than either cares to admit.”

“How so?”

“Well, um.” No one’s ever asked about his research before. “Neither vampires nor werewolves can bare to be solitary, but both exist in isolated pockets – clans, packs, whatever – around the globe. Vampire clans tend to be smaller, I think, although that’s just circumstantial evidence. Even including me, there’s only five Kuragin vampires locally. But wolf packs have this sprawling, familial set-up. I guess genetics can be blamed for that.”

“They’re apex predators.” Sonya explains. “Werewolves are too, but our community has clear laws, democratic systems in place to make sure that we stay safe and hidden. And our primary source of food isn’t _people_. For vampires, if there’s too many of them in one area, the death toll gets very high very quickly, so they spread out.”

“They don’t have laws?” That’s just really, really worrying. They’re scared of things, of en-masse werewolf attacks and hunters, he knows that, but if there’s nothing really in place to protect him – or, for that matter, to protect anyone – how the hell is he still alive?

Her voice becomes tight.

“They’re immortal; they just have a patriarch who acts as judge for them if they do something stupid. Prince Vasili is... not a pleasant man. He’s Helene and Anatole Kuragin’s father.”

Christ. He’s living with vampire aristocrats.

“They have one cardinal rule, though,” she sighs, as though the idea of discussing it is inherently unpleasant. “The creation of new vampires is forbidden without the death of an old one, because if the population grows they’ll kill too many humans, which is noticeable, and infighting between big clans is pretty common and _really_ noticeable.”

All things considered – the time at night, how drunk he is, the fact that he’s getting the simplified version of things from an exhausted twenty year old – Pierre’s pretty sure that he understands, and is about to ask her about the impact of adult, Unturned werewolves on pack sizes, when Sonya suddenly becomes silent and words like the velvet, threatening purr of some predator reach him.

“Ah, Pierre. There you are.”

Cold lips pressed to his cheek, and when he glances sideways, blue eyes like ice half-hidden by dark curls.

Helene.

Sonya glances to the floor, mumbles something politely dismissive of herself, and disappears off into the crowd; with great reluctance, Pierre turns to his wife. Helene smiles and leans one deceptively delicate hand on his shoulder.

“My dear,” he says, trying to keep his frustration out of his voice. When was the last time she used a pet name for him unironically? Five years ago? “What the hell do you want?”

Helene isn’t wearing her plotting face, but then again, that’s never been a great indicator of whether or not she’s actually plotting. She’s always plotting _something_.

“For you to come do shots with us.” she says, and her voice is innocent, almost offended.

That, he can’t oppose. There’s no point trying – _don’t drop your guard, though,_ whispers the one tiny part of his mind still alert.

“Only if I can watch them make them.” he grumbles. Helene arches one perfect eyebrow.

“You don’t trust me?”

“No. No, I really don’t. And who do you mean by ‘us’?”

“Me and Dolokhov.”

“Fucking wonderful.”

 

*

 

It really is the most exhausting thing that Dolokhov manages to look well put together in a suit despite his usual aversion to them. Sure, his tie appears to have gone walkabout – along with Anatole, come to think of it, and isn’t _that_ a worrying thing to have to think – but he’s lounging at the bar as though he lives there with his shirt and jacket in perfect order, and raises a shot glass at Pierre with all the ease of a man in his natural habitat.

“To your health, old man! Drink up.”

Pierre almost feels like saying something about the massive irony of a pair of centuries old vampires referring to him as old – for god’s sake, he’s not even thirty for a few months yet – but instead slides silently into a bar stool and stares just intensely enough at the actions of the bartender to freak out the poor kid. He seems human, and he also seems like he had no idea what he was getting himself in for with this event, and Pierre feels a great swell of worry for the chances of him surviving the night.

“Yes, drink.”

For once, Helene’s voices has only the scarcest hint of sarcasm in it, and Pierre stares down at the brightly coloured line of glasses suspiciously.

“She put anything in these?” he huffs to the bartender. The kid flicks Helene a wide-eyed glance.

“Uh, I- no?”

Pierre sighs heavily and throws two of them down his throat in quick succession. Beside him, and still smirking like he’s waiting for something, Dolokhov swills around the liquid in his neon orange shot glass as though it’s the finest vintage brandy or something.

“This one,” he says, savouring the moment for reasons Pierre really prefers not to concern himself with. “Is to the health of your wife. And to the health of all other beautiful women, too.”

Pierre’s not drunk enough to threaten to fight a full grown vampire.

Not yet, anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dolokhov /is/ important. To me. Which is not to say he's not an asshat, of course.


	4. Dark Deals and Duelling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is Natasha and Anatole at the ball, but because it's from Natasha's POV, it sounds a little bit like a dodgy Twilight. Luckily, we get back to Pierre pretty quickly.

_He_ ’s here.

Natasha should have known he would be – but, she’d thought, hesitantly, that vampires wouldn’t be invited to her celebration. And surely they can’t gatecrash? Or is the old myth of vampires not being able to enter a building without permission just that, just a myth?

It doesn’t matter. Either way, when the cloud of excited relatives clucking around her dissipates, there he is, leaning on the wall opposite the door as though waiting just for her. His eyes are a deep red all of a sudden and she shudders at the sight.

“Divine,” mouths Anatole; either that, or he simply says it and it’s too loud to hear the word. Vaguely, hears Marya cooing as she spots the ever-reclusive Pierre in some corner with some drink, but she can’t concentrate while he still holds her gaze.

Sonya, _literally perfect_ as ever, takes the fall for both of them and allows Marya to drag her off; Anatole nods his head towards a fire exit with a half-smile and slips away so silently that Natasha is left almost wondering whether he was really there at all. The implication that she should follow him is clear as a bell, and yet... she shouldn’t. She can’t. Or, well, she most certainly could, and isn’t that a strange thought, tasting of terror and excitement all at once? The contradictory feelings mix in her mouth and catch in her throat when she tries to quash them, impossible to dismiss. _What if I did follow him?_ Natasha’s stomach flutters. _What then?_ Her hands tremble.

She makes her excuses to her relatives – _no, really, I’m okay, it’s just all a little overwhelming, I think I need some air_ – and darts away quickly, feeling like a child caught with her hand in the cookie jar, only more so, only worse.

The air is biting outside – and, oh, God, poor choice of words. Anatole’s teeth gleam at her from where he’s smiling, far too sharp and too long and too uniform, perfect. There’s barely an inch of space between them.

“Natalie, babe. I’ve missed you.”

“You have?”

Stupid, stupid. Don’t be a baby, think of something smarter to say-

“Madly.” he tells her, his voice a low promise. “More than you can imagine.”

After that he barely pauses for a second, the words flowing from his sculpted lips as though rehearsed; she almost interjects, once or twice, but finds herself captivated and silent as he asks all kinds of things of her. It’s worrying, frightening.

She’s never been so happy to just stand and listen in her life, and yet still, she hesitates when he leans in ever closer and asks – finally – to let him bite her. _That’s- he’s asking me to abandon my whole life, and my family will never speak to me again, and Andrei- Andrei! I can’t, I have Andrei-_

It’s as though he just becomes tired of waiting.

Before she can respond to him, deny him, Anatole’s lips are upon hers, cold and passionate.

It’s wrong. Something’s wrong.

She didn’t want this, not really. She came out here only out of curiosity, like a dumb child with their fingers stuck in a plug socket, and she wants to tell him no, tell him stop, but...

But his eyes are open and fixed on hers, still deep red and still burning.

And she’s helpless but to agree to whatever he says.

 

*

 

Natasha is here, and that is a fact that Pierre is only very vaguely aware of. No matter how he shakes his head or wipes his spectacles on his nice dress pants to try and clear his vision, he’s having trouble making out more than just a sheet of dark hair, big dark eyes, a soulful and more than slightly lost expression on her face. As usual. He was just barely more than a teenager himself last time they saw each other, but you don’t forget someone like Natasha. She’s a good kid.

“I’m so sorry,” he slurs out, not quite managing to communicate what exactly he’s sorry for. She laughs at him – someone does, anyway, and it’s neither Dolokhov’s braying cackle nor Helene’s affected and humourless chuckle – and he knows for sure that she hasn’t understood. Thinks he’s sorry for being so _utterly smashed_ , probably. That’s not the truth of it. He’s sorry that the adults in her life who should know better, the adults who lives four times a human lifespan and the adults she trusts far further than they deserve, have decided that she’s only worth anything as a bartering chip in their half-arsed stupid war.

It’s not like he doesn’t trust Andrei, of course: Andrei’s his closest friend, and his only confidant since the whole _oopsie I married a vampire_ thing. He just doesn’t want Natasha to _have_ to marry Andrei.

The three Rostovas leave in a clatter of heels and bubbly glee, and Pierre sinks even lower in his barstool. Annoyingly, Dolokhov’s voice is perfectly audible as he murmurs “Please let me push him,” somewhere above him: the way that Helene then thumps Dolokhov is somewhat enheartening, though.

She sighs heavily and bends down to pull Pierre back into a more stable position with something slightly more than the usual apathy in her eyes.

“Now, sweetie,” Helene says, each word sharp and precise. He resists the urge to snap back at her that cutie nicknames loose meaning if you only use them to keep up appearances in public. “I need you to understand that I’m only saying this because if you keep drinking at this pace, you’ll drop dead.”

Not that she cares, or anything, because of course not.

“You vastly underestimate the power of my iron liver.”

Helene snorts, somehow managing to do so elegantly.

“Not even counting your borderline alcoholism-”

“ _High-functioning_ alcoholism-”

“Your blood is getting progressively thinner, Pierre. It’s similar to anaemia. So, your tolerance isn’t quite so...”

He spends a few seconds, probably longer than is appropriate, just staring at her in an attempt to comprehend that. Most of it does make perfect sense, of course: it would most certainly explain why he keeps fainting. Eventually, he finds the only words he can.

“...You utter dicks. If- you’re telling me to stop drinking?”

Helene smirks darkly.

“Stop drinking or we’ll start biting other people.”

“No. _No_. I’ve told you, you can’t just go around doing that. No.” A thought occurs to him, how eager she was for him to do shots, and he narrows his eyes. “Were you just deliberately trying to knock me out?”

Without a shred of shame, Helene shrugs.

“Dolokhov saw some girl he wanted to chase down.”

“Heard my name!” chirps the other vampire from Pierre’s left, with relentless cheeriness. He’s leaning back on his elbows, and by now has the twitchy bartender well-trained enough to summon him by flicking his finger out, signalling for more alcohol. “Helene, darling. You can still drink with me. Come, forget the mortal – the night is still young.”

A smile lurks in the corner of his mouth. It’s fucking insufferable. Pierre sees red, lurches to his feet. _This has gone on long enough_ , he thinks, with something unfamiliar like a sense of purpose. His drunk brain decides that there’s only one possible course of action.

“Enough! That’s _it_ , goddamnit. Fight me, you bloodsucking little asshole, _right this second_.”

Pierre’s not the kind of guy who lets a little thing like an inability to stand upright from making bad decisions. Honestly, he likes to make bad decisions at every possible opportunity, which is why he’s completely disregarding the one remaining sensible part of him screaming not to do this.

“Like, a duel?”

There’s something to be said (most likely an expletive) for the way that Dolokhov’s whole being lights up at the first prospect of violence, the way he reverts back to his excitable frat boy puppy mode when offered the chance to physically injure another person. Pierre supposes that if you looked at it from Anatole’s perspective – which, sure, may be a wild and wacky ride, but probably isn’t advisable – it might be endearing. Not for the first time, he wonders why Anatole Turned Dolokhov in the first place, which is of course presuming that Anatole does anything for any other reason than pure boredom.

“If you want it to be a duel,” Pierre says with more than a little growl in his voice. He has an unpleasant hunch that he’s picked up that habit from the vampires he lives with. “Then it’s a duel.”

“Fuck’s sake,” he hears Helene grumble, the eye-rolling practically audible. “I’m going to have to be in mourning for a while. At least black suits me.”

“I’ll get some pistols!”

Dolokhov bounds off with all the excitement of a small child; it is now that Pierre begins to realise his mistake, and – ignoring the stares of just kind of generally everyone in the party by this point – stumbles closer to Helene to put an arm around her shoulders. Not for emotional reasons, or any fear of death – Helene doesn’t outwardly experience emotions and Pierre’s unhealthily amicable towards his own mortality – but in case he falls over, which would just be embarrassing right now.

“Sweetie, how fucked am I?”

“Dolokhov duelled _before_ he had a hundred percent chance of winning every time,” Helene tells him, dripping with contempt and amusement. “And still won every time. He was a marksman in the Russian army in the war-”

 _Which war?_ Pierre wonders.

“-Has killed more people in cold blood than you’ve had hot dinners, and considers a contest in which you point a machine at someone else and both try to murder each other the ultimate test of his precious masculinity. You, on the other hand, go out of your way not to step on bugs. Oh, and he’s not going to bring any iron bullets, so you won’t actually be able to hurt him.”

Like a bad smell, Dolokhov reappears and puts the hand not holding the guns on Pierre’s shoulder so that the three of are forming a kind of human chain of two resentful links and one pumped one.

“This is...” Pierre begins, very slowly, as they begin to walk outside. There are dozens of eyes watching them, but no one follows them out into the quiet courtyard behind the club. It’s out of town, grassy, quiet, and the kind of undisturbed that probably means that ground is full of shallow graves a good number of officials are being bribed not to investigate. “...This is an ‘affair of honour’, correct?”

“Yep.”

It says a lot that he works out that the answering ‘yep’ comes from Dolokhov due to the fact that Helene would never allow such a word to pass her perfect lips, as opposed to the fact that it was uttered by a male voice.

“Okay. I’ve studied history- kinda. I get the general idea.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So, alright, just one question left, though.”

“What’s up?”

They’re maybe a hundred feet from the back of the building: but for the insistent rhythmic _thump_ of music being played far too loud inside and two sets of fading footprints in the frost by the fire escape, the three of them are alone. He feels Helene shift slightly to pull her fur jacket tighter over the crop top she’s wearing. Pierre’s still bleary and unsteady, but the chill and the threat are enough to lend just enough sobriety to the situation that he’s beginning to be seriously concerned.

“Why the _fuck_ are you being so chummy, aren’t we meant to be mad at each other?!”

“Oh.” Dolokhov smiles easily, lazily. “I haven’t had a chance to duel since... what, 1880? The higher you guys’ life expectancy goes, the more concerned you all are about safety, it’s dumb. So, _you_ might be mad at me, but I personally am I just happy to able to shoot someone without being held accountable. Hope I don’t kill you, old man.”

And with that cheery statement, he’s gone.

A whole dictionary of profanity parades through Pierre’s mind, followed by a depressing list of the people who might be sad at his funeral (Andrei, definitely, if anyone bothers to tell him; Marya might cluck her tongue regretfully before wandering off; that Sonya girl had seemed nice, he could imagine her and Natasha putting a lily by his headstone), and finally, slowly, the barest bones of maybe a plan. His ‘research’ into how to protect himself has been fairly minimal – the clan answered one or two questions immediately after his initial discovery of their existence, he’s picked up information from them and their friends and their complete apathy towards any weapon not made of pure iron, and he’s conducted a few unsubtle experiments in locking Balaga out of the house and noting down what measures are actually effective to make sure he can’t get in – but Andrei’s tips are what have stayed with him over the years, the ones drilled into him like gospel over and over, Andrei’s hands grasping his shoulders tight and his eyes scanning Pierre’s face in sincere worry for his friend.

 _Listen_ , he’d said. _You gotta repeat this back to me, okay? Don’t forget it, or you’re putting yourself at risk. Pierre, come on._

He misses him, god. It’s only been a couple of months since they saw each other, but it’s very easy to forget what it feels like to have someone who genuinely cares about you in your life. Pierre doesn’t delude himself about his sexuality, he knows that he’s always going to fall for someone he’s very close to, but it doesn’t even feel like that. Just loneliness.

_They have these tics, to help them hunt and function as a pack and all that, and if you’re smart you can turn it on them. Like tiger stripes, right? Tigers’ stripes make it easier for them to stalk their prey, but they’re also more recognisable to poachers because of them. I haven’t got time for all of them – you’ve got to remember this, though, Pierre, if their eyes go red, they’re on the verge of doing violence to you. Or, uh, other carnal actions. Red eyes mean they’re either aroused or literally less than a second away from clawing you in the gut. I know they’re creeps and social confidence hasn’t been your thing since grade school, but you’ve got to maintain eye contact with them. Promise me that._

His wife’s eyes are burned into his retinas and will never be scrubbed from them, an unchanging electric blue, like the burning heart of a lightning strike. It had seemed an unusual colour for anybody, but especially when highlighted by its stark contrast to Helene’s dark skin, and Pierre had wondered at first but never asked about it. Of course, the reason had become apparent over time – Anatole has the same eyes, but he’s her brother and it hadn’t seemed strange for them to be similar, and then Dolokhov and Balaga have the same eyes, and that was when Pierre started thinking that it was probably a side-effect of being Turned.

Helene’s hand press one of the pistols into his hands; Pierre’s knowledge of guns comes only from terrible movies and half-remembered lectures from his father, but he knows this one is new, not of the sort that Dolokhov used to duel with back in the nineteenth century. Which isn’t to say that he isn’t still decidedly at a disadvantage. Just that he won’t have to adapt to new circumstances like his opponent. Pierre’s too rich to have never shot a gun – this is America, after all, and Good Ol’ Dad was a hunting enthusiast because _of course he was_ – but, still, not like this. Not at another person. Not ever really with the actual intent of hitting anything.

Dolokhov positions them back to back in the empty parking lot, and Pierre knows that he was the one to demand a fight but he thinks he might be about to throw up as they begin to step apart.

 **One. Two. Three**. _Breathe, goddamnit. Remember what Andrei said._ **Four. Five.**

He thanks God silently that today wasn’t one of the days that he forgets to wear his glasses.

**Six. Seven.**

There’s a tiny patch of uneven concrete; Pierre stumbles a little.

**Eight. Nine.**

**Ten** , and he turns sharply on his heel, trying not to let the fingers on the handle shake too much. There’s only enough time for him to glimpse the short tails of Dolokhov’s blazer jacket spinning as he darts around to shoot, the wild, wicked grin, and then-

Red shoots through blue irises like a bloodstain.

Pierre squeezes the trigger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pierre is demisexual I'm sorry I don't make the rules


	5. Helene, Dolokhov, and a Bullet Wound

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, just to clarify, you know that live version of the prologue on YouTube with the original cast where they're outside on a stage all looking slightly drunk? Anatole in that version? That's how I'm imagining him. You're free to imagine him however you want, of course.  
> TW for blood and fear of dying/death and Helene's emotional problems.

Helene’s seen the expression on Dolokhov’s face before, many times, but never on one of her clan, her family. That’s the expression of _food_. He can’t leave her like this, with horror and pain on his face. He can’t leave her at all – that’s not how this is meant to be. _Oh, god,_ she thinks, as the hand she has on his abdomen comes up bloodied, _oh, no, please, no._

“Fedya-” she croaks, and glances up to the drunken fool who did this splayed on the ground. What she’s feeling... Helene can’t work out whether it’s a possessive protective breed of rage behind the sadness, a sense of _how dare you hurt what is mine_ , or if it’s just anger at herself for letting them fight. Dolokhov is bleeding, and even if Pierre had been the one hurt, what then? She knows too well the risks of publicity, drilled into her head by her father. The mysterious shooting of a millionaire would easily be enough to draw attention to his wife and her family and the _three weirdos living in his house_ , and no way in hell would Vasili leave any of them alive to reveal their existence.

_Where the fuck has Anatole got to?!_

“Anatole!”

Not that those thoughts have any consequence, of course. Pierre wasn’t hurt, Dolokhov was, and no one inside the bar would really be in any danger of outing the clan to the world. Werewolves, vampires, a handful of humans, the few banshees and other species not yet extinct who know they have to show their faces at political dinners now and then to avoid the risk of slayers like the Bolkonskys coming for them.

“Anatole, come here – _now_!”

It is the political creatures that have survived through the ages; political, in the very etymological sense of the word, _polis_. Social animals. Pack animals have at least some kind of standard set for interaction with one another, and can then transpose that that standard to interactions with other species, can bend the rules a little to make leeway for the rules of others and hide in this way among humans, if they disguise their nature: werewolves, for example.

The problem is that humans, weak and pathetic though they are, have strength in numbers. And technology, and resilience. There’s nothing they won’t survive – which makes them the ones to fear.

Werewolves are one thing when it comes to ‘blending in’, the truth of their existence evident in their name: man, wolf, just human beings with a strange disease, and still human in their mindset but for a couple of hours every month. But vampires... A vampire is no more a human than a stick insect is a twig. It’s camouflage, it’s disguise, this skin they wear, and it allows them to get close to their prey, and that’s all it’s intended to do. It was never meant to constrain them to human laws and human ways of being. They’re not built the same, inside. Helene feels her incisors sharpen in her mouth as she calls her brother’s name for the third time, and he comes hurtling around the corner towards them.

“Dolokhov?!”

He slides his arms under Dolokhov’s fluidly, smoothly, and holds him up steady arms despite the look of wild, wide-eyed panic on his face.

“Who- what-”

“Pierre,” gasps Dolokhov, with his features twisted in pain and his hands still clutching at the bullet hole. “Dude fucking shot me. Hurts like a-”

He breaks off into a sharp groan and slips sideways out of Anatole’s arms, onto the ground again. The twins exchange a look of alarm; it is Helene, as usual, that bends her knees and forces a stony expression onto her face, unmoveable, like their father. They know by now that even though it was Anatole that Turned Dolokhov, as a born vampire of the same blood she has the same power. Besides: she can’t tell whether he’s just being dramatic or whether he’s actually in danger of dying.

“Fedya. Fyodor. Get up.”

“Fuck you, I _can’t_ -”

“ _Yes, you can._ ” Her words slip into the Russian that is so much more familiar to them both. It’s dangerous to acknowledge that in public, obviously, but who is here that would care? “ _Get up. Right now._ ”

He does as he’s told but glares darkly at her the whole time. There was only a hint of influence in her words: he could probably have resisted, if he had really wanted to, but all that would end with would be either her or Anatole repeating the order so saturated with control that he’d have no choice at all. And wouldn’t mind it, either, with even his emotions under their thumb – blood control is a funny thing. Dolokhov tends to obey before that point, if only because he resents the loss of autonomy.

Reluctantly, and squeezing her fingers far tighter than is comfortable, he allows her and Anatole to pull his hands away from his wound. It’s... really not that bad; Helene feels the last vestiges of panic fade from her mind. Having a bullet hole in your stomach hurts, human or not, but he’s a vampire and it won’t kill him. Blood loss could be a problem, although probably not in this case because-

“Balaga’ll stitch that up fine.” Anatole remarks brightly, stealing the words from her lips.

Like a particularly pissed-off cat, Dolokhov bares his teeth, all of which are pointed and primed as though to fight.

“Could you be a little less chill?” he grumbles to Anatole. “Possibly?”

“Quit being such a baby about it. You’ve had worse.”

He had been cut open in the Napoleonic wars, left to bleed in the snow. He had spent months in filthy, freezing trenches in the First World War with open wounds. As an ‘aristocrat’, which was what they had been posing as at the time, he had been stoned in the street during the Russian Revolution.

They went to America soon after that, after she and Anatole had almost been executed and their friends began to die around them; it had been a new start, their old aliases legally dead, and a new world with it. Nowhere else has ever served them so well – and yet, even knowing that as she does now, Helene can’t rid herself of the crystalline memory of how it had felt at the time. The utter terror of leaving everything behind.

She shakes herself out of her thoughts and turns her attention back to the men. Someone inside will come looking for the three of them very soon, especially considering the gunshots.

“Can you walk?” she snaps, jerking Anatole out of his monologue and Dolokhov out of his resigned, silent listening: there may or may not still be blood magic painting her speech.

Helene refuses to feel guilty that Dolokhov’s eyes become unfocused and his answer is just slightly too fast.

“I don’t think so. No.”

“Come along, then.” Anatole says, and scoops him up in a bridal hold despite his protestations, begins to heft him towards their limo. Usually Balaga would drive – he’s disappeared off to drown whatever strange thoughts pass through his head somewhere he isn’t required to look smart doing so, though, and Helene had taken them, enjoying the way she looks behind the wheel of an expensive car.

_We’ll have to take Pierre home too if we don’t want to be investigated._

The thoughts, innocuous enough, brings another with it that chills her blood and stops her in her tracks.

“Tolya. _Pierre_ shot him.”

“Huh? Yeah, so?”

Predictably, it is Dolokhov that grasps the gist of her worry while Anatole is still trying to work out what the problem is.

“So Pierre Bezukhov... a freakin’ scientist, not even, like, a vaguely aggressive guy-”

“Managed to be faster than you.” she confirms grimly.

The penny drops.

Anatole’s perfect face pales with alarm, his steps falter, his brows crease, his jaw falls open.

“No,” he says. “No, he can’t have. It’s got to have been chance. A... a random coincidence, of course it is- nothing more.”

He all but shoves Dolokhov into the back, and Helene forces herself to squash the urge to snarl at her brother for hurting him, knowing it’s okay, there’s no danger that Fedya could die. There’s more important matters at hand.

“It wasn’t a coincidence.” Helene keeps her voice even and insistent. She didn’t spend three centuries using Anatole to get her way to be ignored in an era of relative equality. “He’s not stupid, and if you ever think he is he’s doing it on purpose. He shot exactly as he meant to.”

“You can’t mean to suggest that-”

“Anatole, would you just listen to me-”

“-that _fucking Pierre_ is actually quick enough to hit a vampire on purpose, god’s sake! He’s not a slayer, he knows barely anything about us, he has no training – it’s impossible. It was beginner’s dumb luck!”

Helene allows the full fury of her gaze to meet her brother’s, then, still glaring, steps into the car and slams the driver’s door shut behind her.

“Get him. No arguing. If he poses a threat to us one day-”

“Which he won’t.” cuts Anatole, like a brat. He glances over his shoulder to Dolokhov for support; receives none. Dolokhov, still clutching his abdomen, only mutters a “no comment” and stays out of the conversation.

“If he poses a threat to us one day, he’ll die, and there can be no doubt about that. I’ll kill him myself.”

“Don’t get your hands dirty, sweetheart.” murmurs Dolokhov. “Needs be, I’ll do it.”

Anatole isn’t being nearly as gentle with Pierre as he was with his Turned companion – which is to say that he’s dragging the other man’s limp form across the parking lot by the elbows, paying no heed to Pierre’s glasses as they tumble from his nose to the ground – and, infuriatingly distracting from Helene’s boytoy being cute, he’s still got that vexed pout on his sculpted lips. When he dumps Pierre in the back of the limo, it’s careless and casual.

“Aren’t you the one that stopped us offing Bezukhov in the first placed, Helene, huh? What’s this sudden change of tune about, eh?”

 _He’s being a dick on purpose_ , she reminds herself, her ruby nails digging painfully into her palm. _Your blood control is acting up. Don’t rise to it, or someone’s going to get hurt._

“You’re very welcome to set the Bolkonskys on us, and for no real reason,” she grates out. “If that’s what you want. If you want to end up dead or in hiding.”

“Damnit, you’re going against your own rules! How can you warn us against killing him and then offer to, it’s patently ridiculous.”

“There are no rules, for one thing,” drawls Dolokhov, only the tenseness of his jaw and the glimmer of pain behind his bored expression to give away that he’s still hurting. “And she said ‘for no real reason’, so...”

“Oh, shut up.”

Anatole slumps back against the seat, defeated, and Helene smirks at him in the rear-view mirror.

“Don’t take it personally. You’re just wrong – and you know, it’s sort of pathetically cute.”

His eyes narrow suspiciously. “What is?”

“How you still think of yourself as clan leader.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, Anatole. Helene's the goddamn boss.


	6. Letters/Charming

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for Pierre's depression. Not many others this chapter.

**To: Andrei-Not-André – 1:07am**

_hey hey how’s that war of yours going_

**To: Andrei-Not-André**

_i’m not meant to know about it i know but big fuckin surprise I DO_

**To: Andrei-Not-André**

_you lucky bastard_

**To: Andrei-Not-André**

_wish i was there. or. just not here._

**To: Andrei-Not-André**

_there are like. vampire guts everywhere, in my carpets & such_

**To: Andrei-Not-André**

_and i’d have an actual excuse to shoot vampires! if i was off being a total freakin badass with you that is_

**To: Andrei-Not-André**

_oh btw on that subject dolokhov is recovering, he’ll be ok_

**To: Andrei-Not-André**

_i feel shitty about the whole thing. should have been me._

**To: Andrei-Not-André**

_i’m a ridiculous man next time i deserved to lose. someone’s gotta end me_

**To: Andrei-Not-André**

_maybe that’s the hangover speaking who knows. not you, you unresponsive bastard_

**To: Andrei-Not-André**

_oh yeah natasha’s back in town!!1!1! looking prettier than ever ;)_

**To: Andrei-Not-André**

_at least i would presume so last night’s v. blurry_

**To: Andrei-Not-André**

_now either i’m being very paranoid or very silly but i think, i think i’ve uncovered a conspiracy that d. trump is a vampire. might be on to something._

**To: Andrei-Not-André**

_not that it matters_

**To: Andrei-Not-André**

_not that anything really matters_

**To: Andrei-Not-André**

_plz reply_

**To: Andrei-Not-André**

_god i’m lonely_

**To: Pierre – 4:58pm**

_what_

**To: Pierre**

_Petyr no offence but what the actual fuck_

**To: Pierre**

_I’m coming home next week okay? Don’t get yourself into any messes until then. Just wait for like, eight days._

**To: Pierre**

_PIERRE CHECK UR GODDAMMN TEXTS_

 

*

 

“Sonya! Where have you gotten to?”

“Right where you left me, Nat.”

Natasha looks beautiful – but then, Natasha always looks beautiful. She can’t seem to help it. Last night, thoroughly made up and in her sparkly dress, her hair up, she had seemed like a princess; now, her hair damply loose around her shoulders and a too-big t-shirt thrown on over just her underwear, she seems like a vaguely dishevelled princess.

“What’re you up to?”

Sonya’s perched on the edge of one of Marya’s massive chaise lounges – which serves both as furniture and an example of the house’s mismatch of ragged, faded grandeur and modern life, being rested on as it is by their smart phones and chargers – reading, although she’s clearly about to have to stop; distractedly, Natasha jumps down next to her.

Rather than answering, Sonya puts the book down and looks carefully at her friend. “Why? What’s wrong?”

“Wrong?” The shock on Natasha’s face is feigned. “Nothing’s wrong! Just...thinking about things.”

She shifts awkwardly at that, and glances away; Sonya feels a little pang of guilt, reminding herself that Natasha’s always been a very private person. They’re closer with each other than they are with anybody else – the intimate details of the workings of Natasha’s mind are, however, still beyond her.

“Sorry. You don’t have to talk about it, just- I mean, if you do want to talk about it, you know I’m always here for you, right?”

Natasha kisses her gently on the cheek: like a breath of wind might kiss, like a zephyr of affection breezing against Sonya’s face. She almost shivers, so perplexed by the little gesture that she doesn’t notice Natasha’s head leaning on her shoulder until the water from the shower seeps through her t-shirt.

“Move your head. You’re getting my shoulder wet.”

It’s not really a protestation. In any case, Natasha ignores her.

“I trust you, Sonyushka.”

“Thank you?”

“Will you cover for me tonight?”

She twists quite suddenly away, so that her cousin falls onto the couch and grumbles an “ow” into the cushion, still the kind of subdued induced by a lack of sleep and being in such a huge house when it’s empty. Nothing quite feels real: she tries to snap out of it, to take Natasha’s request seriously, but she barely can. She rubs her eyes tiredly.

“...why? What are you going to do?”

“God, relax.” Natasha laughs, squirming up to sit right by Sonya again. “I just want to go out. To go shopping, or to a nightclub, or something. You know Marya’s not even going to home until midnight, and you can just tell her I’m asleep when she comes back; it’s not like she’s going to _check_ -”

“She might.”

“Come on! Please?” Sonya fixes her with a steady and resolves stare, saying _really?_ and _no_ almost audibly, and Natasha’s eyes become even bigger and more puppyish than they already were. “I’ve covered for you before, Sonya, remember?”

“You were twelve, and I was sneaking out to get _you_ cookies.”

“I’m not going to get hurt.”

She seems incredibly sure of that.

“It’ll be fine, Sonya. I know where I’m going. Please?”

“Oh, god. I can’t believe I’m about to let you do this-”

Natasha sort of squeals, throwing herself into a hug and shouting, “Thank you so much!”

“Nat, you have to be back by- Natasha!”

She’s already rushed out of the room, the towel that was around her shoulders fluttering to the floor in her wake, doubtlessly to go and fight the endless uphill battle to make her perfect hair more perfect. It’s not as though Sonya’s ever been able to stop her cousin from doing practically as she wishes – no one has. But this, somehow, this seemingly-innocent request has settled uncomfortably in the pit of her stomach with a weight that feels like dread. Natasha is capable of anything. She’s capable of far too much, too many things that could hurt her and those around her, and that’s why she has Sonya. To stop her from getting hurt.

Sonya just can’t help but feel as though she’s just made a horrible mistake.

 

*

 

 _This is Pierre’s house_. The thought strikes Natasha as she raises a hand to the doorbell, and she has to lower it slowly at the memories of him that flood her mind. Pierre and Andrei jumping around to bad music at Andrei’s eighteenth birthday; Pierre and Andrei, arms slung around each other at the start of Andrei’s twenty first and both fully clothed in the pool by the end of it; Pierre performing magic tricks to summon candy and small change from behind her ears; Pierre, always a reliable source of cookies at family parties, always a quiet, warm place to hide. Pierre who could tell you all about stars and butterflies and Napoleon. Cool older cousin Pierre, until she’d gotten old enough to know that he was not her cousin and far too awkward to be cool.

Will he be here?

Last night wasn’t really Pierre. It was a funny pile of Pierre’s likeness heaped onto a barstool, his face too pale, his beard too scruffy, his hair too long and his eyes too fogged. She wonders, hesitantly, who she’ll find inside if Pierre _is_ here: the version she remembers, a nerdy old soul with a bear hug ready for her; or this new, false version that has grown up in his place, endless enthusiasm giving way to unrelenting apathy.

It’s not Pierre that answers the door when she does press the bell, though. It’s an elegant figure in a silky red cardigan, curls loosely braided, who grins down at her like a lioness baring her teeth.

Anatole’s sister. Elena Kuragina – or rather, Elena Bezukhova, she has to remember that, because that’s the whole reason the vampires are here in the first place.

“You must be Tolya’s Natalie.” she says, still smiling. “Do call me Helene; only Father bothers with ‘Elena’, and... well, old family tensions.”

Natasha flushes. She had been so sure that she didn’t mention the matter of Helene’s name aloud.

It’s darker inside than out, every heavy curtain drawn despite it being the middle of the afternoon. She almost expects candlelight for a moment – but, no, there are perfectly ordinary electric bulbs hanging from the ceiling, and floodlights in the kitchen that Helene leads her to. Beneath their harsh, unforgiving glare, the other woman looks unreal and half-ethereal. More alien than anything: scarcely human at all.

Of course, she’s not human. The grace of her movements under the light, the silent watching of her striking eyes, the half-smile upon her lips, make Natasha suddenly all too aware of Helene’s utter _otherness_. The Rostov werewolves are old and wise and worldly and everything, but not... Not like this. They’re still so full of life and humanity.

Natasha’s so fixated on Helene that she barely notices the men at the table.

“Meet Natalya Ilynichna, gentlemen.” says Helene with a tight-lipped smile. Her eyes never leave the pair of them; Natasha’s not stupid, and she can’t help but think that Helene is being more cautious than she’s letting on. Why, though? “I believe you can do the math as to her surname.”

One of the men is – or, he appears – young, his hair gelled halfway to the heavens and the muscles of his bare arms visibly tensing against the wood that he’s leaning on. She recognises him from the party, from a split second glimpse of him sitting next to Pierre, and privately thinks that a tank top suits him better than a suit. _But_ , she notices, _he wasn’t wearing those heavy bandages yesterday, was he?_ He doesn’t bother to disguise the way that his eyes track up and down her body; Natasha, glancing quickly to the floor, finds herself scarlet and embarrassed. She doesn’t feel like herself at all like herself, the thrill and terror of the way that this man and Anatole have looked at her like a sexual creature seeming to not quite fit under her skin.

The other looks more middle-aged. His salt-and-pepper beard is grown too long, scruffy, with a grey woollen beanie and matching sweater adding to his bizarrely rustic appearance in the face of the other vampires’ acute fashion sense. Natasha’s paying attention to his companion, half her gaze still on Helene, when a sudden movement jerks her eye to him: the younger one’s hand snaps out and braces against his chest to hold him back from something, and his eyes flash red for a breathlessly frightening moment before they go back to blue.

“ _Don’t you dare_.” hisses Helene, the harsh Russian syllables alien to Natasha. All she knows is that both of the men at the table immediately look away. “ _You know she’s Anatole’s_.”

“And yours.” barks the older man, crudely like laughter.

Helene only arches one eyebrow and beckons the confused Natasha to follow her through to what looks like a living room, saying to her, “Meet Dolokhov and Balaga. Best not to do so in too much detail.”

“I- okay-” stammers Natasha, and runs a little to catch up with her. The thought of being left alone with the two men is a frightening one.

“Don’t mind them.”

Strangely, the words – even casual as they are – carry very little comfort.

“They’re idiots, but they’re harmless, so long as Anatole and I are around. We have... certain powers to make sure of that.”

 _This living room shouldn’t really be called that_ , Natasha realises gradually as she allows Helene to direct her along to a gleaming black sofa. _There’s no living here._ Besides, the word ‘lounge’, the shape of it on her tongue and the decadence it implies, fits this place so much better. She can’t help but think that the Pierre she knew would never have created such a space in his house.

“Powers?” she asks, holding up the somewhat faux-innocent front despite a number of informed suspicions forming at the back of her mind.

“Now, let’s not be silly,” Helene doesn’t drop her smile: it simply fades as she speaks, her eyes keen and sparking with intellect. “You’re not a human, Natalie. Even Dmitryevna wouldn’t keep _all_ of our world from you – don’t pretend you don’t know a little of blood magic.”

“I didn’t mean- I-”

“Just tell me what you know.” Helene tells her, more gently and not unkindly.

Natasha takes a deep breath, summons all of the information passed on second-hand to her from Sonya and Andrei and their lessons that she can remember.

“Vampires, especially Born vampires, can exert varying degrees of influence over those they Turn because of the biological link created by the sharing of their genetic material...”

She says it evenly, with the tone of a recitation, even though she’s pretty sure that a carnivore like Helene can probably hear how fast her heartbeat is racing away; but then falters, remembering the turn of phrase that Andrei had used to describe this connection. His lip had curled up in disgust, he’d spat it out, then immediately changed the subject – and Natasha feels a little faint at the prospect of her lovely Andrei talking about _her_ that way. That is, until the image of Anatole and his open smile swims back to the forefront of her brain.

“Go on, elaborate.” urges Helene, a genuine interest twisted around her words, and Natasha reluctantly does.

“I don’t mean to offend you – I was told that... that the connection is apt to break after a few years, but the vampires keep acting like it’s still there because – well, I mean, psychologically, I heard that it was like,” Natasha wishes pointlessly for a way out of this awful conversation. Where _is_ Anatole? “A victim’s attachment to their abuser. That was how Sonya- I mean, that was what I was told about it.”

The older woman lifts her legs underneath her to recline on the couch across from Natasha like a model for some Renaissance painting of a goddess, which, of course, it’s all too possible she was. The expression on her face is bemused.

“Well, that would be what a werewolf would tell you.” she sighs. “And not true, unless you’re separated by an ocean or some other such distance, and have been in the clan for a matter of years. Think of it as a neat evolutionary trick to let us older creatures control the bloodlust of hungry new vampires, to protect people from them.”

“It still seems a little-”

“A little strange? Absolutely, but there’s a reason for it. Ninety nine percent of the time, the head of any given vampire clan will be a born vampire, and any member of that vampire’s biological family will automatically defer to them. We’re not like humans; Turned vampires, though, they _are_ like humans. And if they can’t control their urges and follow the rules, we can make them.”

Helene offers her a smirk.

“Not that it should apply to you, sweet Natalie. Just that you ought to know.”

She’s a little frightened again, but takes care not to look it too much; that’s just the effect of the Kuragin siblings, it seems.

“Why won’t it apply to me?” she asks boldly. When she was a little girl she used to run about with a plastic sword, and she wasn’t afraid of anything, even though most of the people she knew had the capacity to turn into enormous, terrifying beasts. Natasha keeps that part of her safe in her heart to draw from when the world becomes intimidating.

“Pretty young thing like yourself? Oh, darling, you’re far too charming for that. See, vampires like Balaga or my Dolokhov try to go after their meals by force, but others, others like you... you’re smart enough to find blood without violence.”

Before she can respond to that, before she can express the discomfort and dread in her heart at the mention of how vampires feed, Helene is speaking again. Anyway: it doesn’t matter. Her Anatole wants her to be with him, forever, and as an immortal he knows best. He wouldn’t make a mistake.

“You mustn’t tell a soul, Natalie. If you keep it quiet this won’t be impossible to hide for a few days – until you get hungry – but, really, letting anyone hear about your transformation could mean serious trouble.”

 _Is that a threat?_ she wonders, gazing at the older woman with huge eyes.

“Not necessarily from me or Anatole or the others.” explains Helene stiffly. “There’s a – _guideline_ , let’s call it, about the creation of new vampires. Father won’t be too worried, of course, but it wouldn’t be the first time Anatole’s gone and Turned someone without permission, and it’s something of a scandal.”

Natasha nods hesitantly, reaching up to twist a strand of her dark hair between her fingers as she considers the words.

“If it’s not too rude to ask... how many people has he Turned?”

Helene pauses for a moment before she answers: it’s not because she doesn’t know, only because she’s not sure whether to admit to it or not.

“Nine.”

_Nine._

God, so many, for such a small clan. _Where are they now?_ whispers a little voice at the back of her mind, but it is immediately silenced by Helene coming to tower over the still-sitting Natasha. She bends elegantly down and kisses her cheek, robbing the breath from Natasha’s lungs, before she smiles gracefully at her.

“Let’s not speak of such things now, pretty Natalie. Come along, I’ll show the spare rooms.”

Natasha knows, in her heart, that the darkness is an illusion and the Kuragins’ house – _Pierre’s_ house – is nothing more than just a twisted old mansion.

It still feels like she’s wandering into a labyrinth, though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Helene's so bi......


	7. Turned

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for implicit rape metaphor - nothing is explicit, and there's no actual sex. This is all Anatole's fault.

A kind of soft crash that denotes Marya casually kicking the door of the house closed behind her and shaking the very foundations by accident. Footsteps on the stairs. Sharp knocking on wood.

Sonya doesn’t move a muscle, apart from to bring her hand up to bite anxiously at her nails; she’s sitting on her bed, the book in her hands lying open and ignored on the same page it has been for more than an hour, and staring at the door.

“Sonya?” Marya waits for an answer, receives none, knocks again and more loudly. “Sonya, are you awake?”

“I am now.” she calls, trying to keep her voice steady.

There’s an almost imperceptible frustrated huff from outside the door.

“Can I come in?”

“I’m in bed, Marya, so, no. Natasha-” Sonya hesitates to lie so blatantly. “Natasha’s asleep. She’s been really tired for a couple of days.”

There’s a pregnant pause, and then just, “Oh.”

Crumpling in on herself, Sonya buries her face in her hands. Something’s wrong. Something’s horribly wrong.

“Well, tell her to come and see me in the morning, dear.”

The click-clack of Marya’s heels on the hard floor of the hall; then, nothing.

She sits still in the half-light, waiting for nothing at all and yet unable to move.

And then Natasha’s phone, lying forgotten on her dresser, buzzes.

 

*

 

“Try not to worry.” Helene tells her, terrifyingly, as she shows Natasha to an attic door half-hidden just by the sheer density of this windowless darkness at the top of the house. Once upon a time this must have been a boiler room, or some kind of storage closet; it must have been, because Natasha can’t bear to imagine the hell that such a small and windowless space must have been for any human being living in it.

The furniture in the room is disconcertingly modern, as is the rest of the house that Natasha has seen; it’s not the mismatched patchwork of old and new that Marya’s house is, but is instead what seems like an intrusion, the twenty-first century forcing itself in where it doesn’t belong and isn’t wanted. Of course, she can barely make out more than just the vague shape of every chair and table underneath the plastic dust-cloths they’ve been covered with – she feels as though she’s wandered into a waking nightmare where nothing is entirely real and touch and sight are obscured and numbed.

It’s from this gloom that Anatole appears.

“Natalie!”

His arms around her are reassuring, solid. Inescapable.

“Oh, darling, I’m so glad to see you. I’ve spent the entire day thinking about you... about this.” His voice lowers, and somewhere in her periphery Natasha notices Helene slipping out with a smirk. “Natalie, baby, are you ready to be with me?”

There’s only one possible answer she can find it within herself to say; and yet, the words catch in her throat, and she gives a mute nod instead. Anatole searches for no further consent.

He leaves her quickly to search beneath the tarpaulins for his equipment, and she feels herself sway, flushing dark red.

“You okay?” he asks, the question perfunctory and brief.

“Um.” she stammers. “I think Helene might have gotten me a bit drunk – there was whiskey, and she and I-”

 _Helene’s so pretty_. That was all she could think, at the time, with the older woman’s hand in her and a glass in the other. They’d been giggling, talking. _She’s so pretty, and so kind. Why don’t I know more people like Helene? She’s so nice to me._ Part of that had been just Helene crooning soft words to her part in English, part in French that sounded slightly off, that Natasha was adorable, just so cute, _vraiment, très mignon, charmante_ _._ From such a beautiful woman, the praise had been intoxicating.

“Don’t worry.” His smile is gentle and it lights up his entire face. “Blood from drunk people, or addicts, is like... I don’t know. Flavoured. You can get second-hand high.”

She’s the one to make him smile like that: the knowledge brings a silly grin to her face, where it remains until there’s a sharp prick of pain in her arm, and she looks down in shock to see the sharp end of an IV being poked into her by his careful hands.

“A-Anatole-”

“Shh. Don’t you want to be safe? It’s safer like this.”

She stares him straight in his eyes, feeling her heart beat faster and faster like some terrified, doomed animal.

“I trust you.” whispers Natasha. It’s not a statement. It’s a plea. A drop of blood fall from the puncture wound in her forearm, and she understands suddenly why they’d need the furniture to be covered.

He only smiles again, with his ruby eyes shining, and raises his arm to show her where the tube connects to his – the demand for reciprocation is implicit in his gaze, but so implicit that she hears it echoing around the silence. _Don’t make a fool of yourself. Don’t make him ask_.

Hesitantly, she leans her head to the side.

And he puts his hands on her shoulders and pulls her towards him and she’s panicking and it feels like she can’t get enough air in through her lungs and _what will Marya think_ and _what will Sonya think_ and _what will Papa think_ and she doesn’t trust these vampires and _where the hell is Pierre why isn’t he here_ and his nails are digging into her back and her arm hurts and her neck hurts so much and, and, and-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a short one! The slight delay in posting was because I was driving through Spain and Portugal for a few days, so I didn't have any internet. Updates will continue on schedule from here.


	8. Preparations and Hesitations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Dolokhov.

**From: Anatole Kuragin – 11:39 pm**

_where are you???? you said if you loved me you’d be at my house tonight_

**From: Anatole Kuragin**

_natalie baby don’t you love me?_

**From: Anatole Kuragin**

_i couldn’t live without you darling_

**From: Anatole Kuragin**

_i want to steal you away, make you mine_

**From: Anatole Kuragin – 12:15 am**

_i know it hurts now but when you see this later know that i love you <3_

 

Sonya trembles almost violently, the phone falling through her fingers to the ground with a dull thud. With a horror that seems to press in at the edges of her existence, she presses her hand over her mouth. This can’t be happening. Natasha can’t be a vampire. What in hell are the Kuragin clan _doing_ , god, they must be insane to think of touching her with Andrei on his way home so soon and nearly every goddamn werewolf in the Rostov clan rallied only a couple of miles from them...

They’re not thinking at all. It’s obvious, of course, now that she looks at it carefully. They’re just blindly following Anatole and his stupid obsessions around, letting him do as he wants. And Natasha is suffering with it because not everyone in their awful clan is an idiot and they know they can use her to stop the alliance between the werewolves and the Bolkonskys.

Sonya can’t just let this happen.

But she can’t just stop it. It’s too late: if the messages mean what she thinks they mean, Natasha’s already Turned, already one of them. _That’s ridiculous_ , she scolds herself immediately. _She’s still a Rostov. She’s still Tasha._ Underneath her training and her logic, Sonya feels betrayed, wants to run downstairs and scream what’s happened so that Marya and her wolves can grab their guns and come for the Kuragins with a vengeance; the trained part of her, though, the one who knows Natasha better than any other living soul and knows above all how to correctly manipulate bloodthirsty werewolves, tells her to wait. They’ll all be transforming in two days – just over one day, now – and that’s the time to do it.

 _How can I hide the fact that Natasha’s missing, though?_ she thinks, and her blood runs cold just in time for the clicking of the window latch opening to make her jump half out of her skin. A switch inside her brain flips quickly, but easily, without trauma; from shaky girl scared for her best friend to poised and dangerous and prepared to kill within seconds. The handgun on the dresser next to her eyeliner is in her hands almost instantly, the incriminating phone on the floor kicked neatly underneath Sonya’s bed.

“It’s me!” stage-whispers Natasha, just loud enough that Sonya knows she’s climbed up onto the balcony in the exact way she was forbidden to do several times as a child. “Put the gun down, I know you’ve got it by now – it’s just me!”

“Natasha?”

Her cousin, at first glance, looks exactly the same as when she had left. But when she’s clambered through the window and thrown her hair back Sonya sees the subtle differences: red-rimmed eyes like she’s been crying, unnatural stillness, holding herself gingerly with some kind of constant pain or ache.

“Yes?”

 “I was... worried about you.”

Natasha hugs her, just gently, just for a few seconds. It’s not the same as how she had thrown herself into Sonya’s arms that afternoon at all; her skin’s chilly from being outside, but it’s not cold. Not yet.

“No need to worry! Thanks for waiting up, though.”

And with that, she’s slipping into the bathroom and Sonya is, once again, alone. Profoundly alone – no one to help her, no one to confess to, nowhere to turn. She can wait it out (or, she can try) until the time is right. But until then, she’s alone.

 _Tasha’s eyes are still brown_ , she thinks to herself, and then finds she can’t stop thinking about it. _They’ll change in the night. Her system will consume the last of her human blood and her eyes_ will _turn blue, and then red when she’s hungry._

“Where were you?” she hears herself say, just loud enough to be heard.

“Uh, nowhere? Just shopping around. I didn’t bring enough money to get anything.”

Sonya forces herself to clear the lump in her throat and continue, hesitantly saying, “Not... with the Kuragins?”

“No!” Natasha sticks her head around the door. “What? No, Sonya, why would I have been?”

There’s a slight wildness to her – _still brown_ – eyes.

Sonya mutely shakes her head. “I don’t know. Anatole and you spoke at the party, is all, and I was worried that-”

“Well, you don’t need to be.” Natasha cuts, voice sharp. “Not that it’s any of your business!”

It’s not certain proof, but those words seem enough to confirm all of Sonya’s fears and theories as she goes back to her bed and looks away. She knows what she has to do. _What it is is what’s best for Natasha,_ she tells herself. _For her happiness and her safety._ And that makes all the difference, because she’s known for a long time that that’s all that matters to the family, to Marya, to the _pack_. It’s not about Sonya. It’s about Natalya Rostova –Sonya’s just the one who has to wait in the dark and save her.

 

*

 

In his typical dramatic fashion, Anatole had – upon moving into Pierre’s house several years ago – chosen a room for himself right in the top corner of the house, overlooking the garden rather than the street. It’s exactly the kind of room that no one would ever imagine belongs to a vampire: big windows, lots of light, pale walls with ever-so-vaguely erotic art, all thin lines and slight human figures. Only the silky red bed-sheets break the stylish mode, and they do have a certain... _effect_ on the overall tone, as Anatole doubtlessly intended, the tiniest nod in the direction of the usual purpose of this innocuous-seeming ode to fashionably hipster minimalism: really, the only formidable thing about the room is its inhabitant.

He and Dolokhov, that is. Dolokhov lounging back on the aforementioned ridiculous bed and wondering whether Natasha and Anatole are intending to share it. Dolokhov totally not watching Anatole’s ass as the other man leans distractedly on his window-sill, Dolokhov only slightly bitter. Dolokhov managing somehow to ignore Helene storming in wearing nothing but a bralette underneath her sheer cardigan because like, _damn_ , and all, but he’s seen it all before and there’s more important matters on his mind.

“You sent her _home?_ ” half-shrieks Helene. “Are you mad?!”

“Chill the fuck out. You’ll wake up Pierre.”

Anatole doesn’t turn around to reply to his sister, and Dolokhov absentmindedly speaks to his back.

“Not likely, if he didn’t hear your Natalie’s screaming.”

Helene’s eyes narrow as she glares at the pair of them, her perfect nails pressing into the palms of her hands as she balls her fists in frustration.

“You sent her home, into a _literal pack of wolves_? They’re going to notice. It’s too soon! You should have kept her here a few more hours, at least-”

“Will you calm down?” snarls Anatole, whirling on her. “She’s only there so that that god-awful Rostov woman doesn’t feel the need to send out a search party.”

Helene regards him with increasing disdain, her hands planted on her hips.

“And how do you plan to get her back, Mister Genius?”

With all the grace of immortal lifetimes of privilege, Anatole rolls his eyes and sighs heavily at her through his nose.

“Tomorrow night, Balaga is going to drive me to pick her up. Dolokhov’ll come too. I’ve got 10,000 dollars and first class plane tickets to that cabin we boarded up in the Rockies – might even have someone to marry the pair of us, but I’m not sure yet. It’ll be easy.”

“It’d be easier not to do it at all.”

Dolokhov keeps his voice level, his body language relaxed and unaggressive; Helene and Anatole – not just them, he’s pretty sure, probably all Born vampires, and those who’ve been Turned long enough too if Balaga is any evidence – are like feral animals when they’re jumpy, and prone to blow on a hair trigger. Neither of them is exactly shaking, but it’s not convincing him. Both of the Kuragins are on edge.

“ _What_?” Anatole practically spits, turning to stare at him incredulously.

It’s dumb, he knows. But Dolokhov rises to it anyway.

“Don’t you think it’s time to give the whole thing up?” He stands up suddenly. “While you still can – for fuck’s sake, you can’t just waltz up to the Rostov mansion! You’ve Turned her, pissed them off, isn’t that enough?”

“‘Enough’? Are you fucking kidding? I want _her!_ How could that be enough?!”

“I’m not kidding. I’m the only person taking this seriously. Would you listen to me? This is crazy, it’s really crazy. Helene was right: you’re going to set the Bolkonskys on us for touching her and get us all killed. Turning her, if she let you, that’s one thing. But they’ll call it an abduction if you just scoop her up, and they’ll come after you.”

“Fedya-” There’s a warning growl in Anatole’s voice, but he ignores it.

“No! She’s just a kid, Anatole, you don’t really want her. You’re messing with a little girl just because you can! And never mind that, because I know it’s never bothered you before, but you’re messing with a _Rostov_ little girl – they’re going to rip your heart out with their bare teeth, are you too stupid to realise that? Or do you just not care?”

“Shut up!” shouts the older man, grasping at his own hair as his fangs lengthen in his mouth and his eyes flash red. The first words are just shouts, nothing more. When he repeats them, they’re an order. “Shut up!”

Dolokhov, stiffly, shuts his mouth and looks to Helene. With that rare expression of exhaustion, like she’s letting the centuries of hiding catch up to her for just a minute or two before she puts on her perfect mask again, she unfolds her arms and puts one hand on her brother’s shoulder.

“He has a point.” she says, softly. “She’s not for us.”

“You helped!”

“I was wrong.” Helene admits. Dolokhov wonders vaguely whether he’s dreaming. “Why couldn’t you have waited? I don’t deny – she’s... charming, absolutely charming, but it was a mistake. Leave her. If she seeks you out, let her, but I’ve changed my mind. You should leave her to her family.”

Anatole looks like a wounded animal, lost in this wholly human room. The disguise is slipping again.

“It’s a dumb crush.” sighs Helene, the killing blow. Anatole somehow dodges around it and come back with a fury.

“Oh, come on, Helene, we’ve kept people because of _your_ dumb crushes too. Or don’t you remember?”

“Don’t you _dare_.” she snarls. Both siblings are aiming the full force of their powers at each other, both perfectly aware that it’s useless and won’t affect the other, and Dolokhov feels the control lifted from him.

“Anatole.” he says, interrupting their posturing before either can strike. “You have to stop. You have to. I’ll – I’ll tell Pierre!” The dumbass would be able to reach Bolkonsky pretty quickly, right?

It doesn’t go down quite how Dolokhov had thought it would; Anatole doesn’t stop in his tracks, doesn’t threaten him, doesn’t beg him not to. He pauses for a moment, rubs his face with both hands so that it’s obscured, and begins to shake. For a second, Dolokhov allows himself to think that maybe it’s crying – he’s never seen Anatole cry before.

But he’s not crying: he’s laughing. Dolokhov’s heart sinks to the pit of his stomach.

“Sorry, sorry,” Anatole giggles, and when he moves his hands his eyes are back to blue, blue as drowned men. “Just... Do you remember the day I Turned you?”

_Agony. Anatole’s face above his, whispered words in his ear, and before that, the terror of the man he could only almost call a friend pulling him off the street for ‘drinks’ and then being at his throat mere seconds later._

He doesn’t need to answer. After all, how could he forget?

“You wanted to go find your mother. Remember that?”

“...yeah.”  Anatole hadn’t let him, which of course he understands now, but at the time had felt like some great injustice. Or it had until...

“Until I sent you after Drubetskoy, huh? And then Karagin, and Bazdeyev? You were all too happy to do that, of course, because I told you to and I’m the one who created you. And who drove us?”

He wants an answer to that one, grabbing Dolokhov by the shoulders and all but shaking him.

“What the hell do you-”

“Who drove us, Fedya?!”

He takes a deep breath. “Balaga.”

“And are you not seeing a fucking pattern yet, you idiot?”

“Anatole-” chides Helene, and her voice is weirdly subdued and Dolokhov can’t help the spark of dread in his heart at that.

“No, no, no,” Anatole interrupts, waving a hand to stop her. “If he’s going to get uppity, he ought to know, right?”

Anatole pushes him back to sitting on the bed, livid, just to tower over him.

“I Turned Balaga because I needed a driver who could keep his mouth shut. I Turned you because I needed an assassin who’d stay loyal to me. Get it?” With his handsome features twisted and snarling, he gestures around himself. “Why do you think you’re here? You’re a pet! And once upon a time, I actually obeyed Father’s laws and made sure that no one I Turned lived long enough to be noticed; then _she_ had to go and fall for your stupid face and ruin it and make me keep you, and Balaga too because _why not_ if I was already going to be in trouble! Understood?!”

Dolokhov finds that his hands are trembling.

“That’s enough.” Helene barks, and Anatole laughs that hysterical laugh again.

“It’s not, though, because your stupid boyfriend feels like he can just do what he likes.” To Dolokhov, he says, “You, stay here. Don’t move until we’re back. _Don’t_ try to tell Pierre anything. I’m going to go and take what’s actually mine – and if either of you thinks you can stop it from happening, you’ve got another thing coming.”

He’s storming out, Helene glancing only once towards Fedya before she follows him in a whirl, but it wouldn’t matter. Even without the control binding him, he wouldn’t have been able to move.


	9. part i

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The day that Sonya decided to save her.

Everything is exactly the same as how it has always been. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, Sonya knows exactly what will happen tonight.

Everything has changed beyond repair. What will happen tonight is impossible to predict and shrouded in doubt.

Sonya can’t decide which extreme is true, exactly, but she’s pretty sure that wavering between both of them is unhealthy and she should probably stop. Today is a Friday, and it had started much as every Friday she’s ever spent at Marya’s, progressed more or less exactly how every one of the days in a Pack before a scheduled transformation – _wolf period_ , says the memory of Pierre Bezukhov, his awkward smile tainted with all Sonya now knows happened that night; she can’t help but wonder with no small degree of horror whether he knows too, whether he’s been in on his brother-in-law’s plans the whole time – and now, is about to end in a sort of chaos she doesn’t know how to second guess.

On one hand, Sonya has been sure this whole time of what she needs to do: keep everyone away from Natasha until the time is right, have her weapons ready, go upstairs and polish her plan until it’s perfect and has no vulnerabilities... But on the other one, she’s never actually had to do much of what she was trained to do, and she’s uncertain and shaky. She feels like one of those people crazy enough to climb a cliff-face without any equipment – holding herself up, but with an unsure grip; knowing where to put her feet next, but still aware that such a movement could easily be her last.

As of so far, at least, the plan has fallen perfectly into place. She’d wandered downstairs around nine, and the house had been fairly quiet but not deserted. Nikolai Rostov and a couple of his cousins were bickering about baseball at the kitchen table. Marya Dmitryevna had been sweeping about the house, stashing breakables out of reach in preparation for the oncoming transformation. Natasha was in a ball under her duvet. Sonya made tea for both of them.

It was perfectly, soul-crushingly ordinary.

“There you are!”

Marya’s voice had seemed to come of nowhere, as had the arm that briefly hugged Sonya to her. All too self-conscious of how convincing her act was, Sonya didn’t dare to look up from what she was doing.

“Are you alright, child?”

“Me? I’m fine. Good.” she had bluffed, far too quickly. Trust Marya not to follow it up, though.

“Well, now, no need to look like you’ve seen a ghost, then. It’s hardly your charge that’ll be Turning tonight, is it?”

She had had to conceal the shudder that ran through her. _If only you knew how close you were._

“No, Marya.”

The older woman had given a sort of satisfied huff and began to march upstairs, and Sonya had forced herself into proper action, interjecting with a hand on her godmother’s shoulder.

“Oh, Marya: Natasha thinks she’s pretty ill. Just a bug, but you know her-”

“‘No one can see me when I’m sick because that’s when I’m ten times uglier than usual’.” Nikolai had interrupted, in a falsetto Sonya supposes was meant to sound like Natasha.

The scowl she wheeled on him with hadn’t been forced like the rest of the morning’s interactions; when she was very little, only maybe nine or ten, she’d had a massive crush on him. But, a proper werewolf with the ability to Turn, and her cousin, at that? No one had even needed to tell her why Nikolai would never love her.

He’s alright, in as much as all the Rostovs are good people. But he’s an asshole when he’s with his friends – who, predictably, laughed. Sonya turned to Marya again.

“Just... I wouldn’t bother trying to see her, or expecting her to be up.”

It’s not the smartest thing she could have said, the smoothest excuse, but she had been certain it wouldn’t matter too much: today was perhaps the only day that Rostov wolves would miss the opportunity to dote on their heiress. Today, Marya was way too busy.

And no way, just from that, would she have been able to guess the truth.

The story of Natasha being ill had an immediate alibi – despite it, of course, being a massive lie. Natasha hadn’t even let the covers be pulled off her head once Sonya got up. A few hours earlier into the sleepless night that Sonya had spent in the dark, she’d heard her friend walk to the mirror, heard muffled words that were very probably expletives; and then mysteriously, Natasha was claiming to be feeling sick.

 _Her eyes will be blue by now_.

It’s nearly five o’clock – that’s when sunset is due today. Google is ridiculously helpful concerning these things. So there’s only a few minutes until the pack will start to involuntarily Turn. Marya’ll probably go first, as usual, and that means that Sonya has even less time to find her than she had planned, now that she thinks about it, and she has to tell her _right now_.

Sonya knows what she has to do. She’s still scared.

Which is probably why, when her godmother barrels down the staircase and almost crashes into her, the first thing she blurts is, “Don’t be mad.”

“What?”

She had expected to have to fight for Marya’s attention in the chaos that is the house right now – instead, Marya’s voice is all of a sudden filled with concern, her hands steadying Sonya’s shoulders.

“Child, what is it? What’s wrong?”

After so long of Sonya standing silently in the dark, she supposes, after her putting up with so much, it must be alarming to hear an actual call for help.

“It’s Natasha-” she says, then falters. “I-I mean, of course it’s Natasha,”

Sonya swallows heavily.

“She’s been Turned.”

That, _that_ twists fury into the elegant lines of Marya’s face. As Sonya supposed, of course, but... well, she hadn’t dared to think that the older woman would understand so quickly.

“Bitten? Already?! What kind of a fool would– she’s meant to transform on her eighteenth, that’s how the plan has always been, she’s not _ready_ now. Whichever wolf has-”

 _Oh_.

Sonya shakes her head fervently, and finally dares to meet Marya’s eyes. Her yellow, glowing eyes. She was late, it seems: the transformation has already begun.

“No.” she says, voice urgent but level. “No, you have to listen to me. She’s not a werewolf, Marya. The Kuragins – Anatole, maybe Helene too – got to her at the party, and then last night... I think that-”

“A _vampire_?!” For a few seconds, Marya simply stares at her. And then she shakes her head, and Sonya’s heart sinks. “No, no. You must be mistaken.”

It’s dangerous, right now, to be arguing with the pack leader. It’s dangerous at any time if you’re not as close to her as Sonya, but when she’s this much wolf, thinking _alphabossdowhatisayi’minchargeofthepackhunt_ , it’s just asking for trouble. But she has to anyway – which means there’s only one way about it. Letting Marya up to see Natasha isn’t an option; vampire or not, she loves her cousin, and she’s not putting her in danger.

Sonya holds out Natasha’s phone and the messages, wordlessly.

And she finally, finally knows she’s done the right thing when Marya doesn’t question it: just looks up in fury and _howls_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All late chapters are the fault of the fact that I'm still on holiday, and have been travelling up and down Europe with very patchy wifi. Don't worry about it :)

**Author's Note:**

> This AU was invented by me and officialhamlet on tumblr. We can be found at http://unseeliecosette.tumblr.com/ and http://officialhamlet.tumblr.com/ if you want to chat! I'm also pretty interested in writing a Hogwarts AU.


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